Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter to the point where it makes them not want to switch sites?

To me, the stripped down clarity on Lemmy is a feature. I remember back in the day when people flocked to Facebook from MySpace, in large part because they were sick of eye gouging customized pages and just wanted a simple, consistent interface. The content, not the buttons to click on it are the draw right?

  • AB7ORH7D@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think Lemmy could use some more ads. I feel like I don’t have enough material things, and I don’t know what to buy. /s

  • XYZinferno@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “The hosts are too lazy” says the person whining about it without doing anything.

    Try switching to a platform you’ve never used before and making a community out of nothing, or host the Lemmy instance and be forced to deal with thousands of new users daily. Lazy my ass…

  • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The reason I used Reddit is Fun WAS because of its stripped down, bare bones style. I only wanted to read thoughts and opinions, and choose to view images/video/ads when I wanted to. This is absolutely a feature of Jerboa (and Lemmy) for me

    • NakamuraEmi_bias@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know the background of OP so this is just an opinion: I feel that modern UX have become so ubiquitous and streamlined for content consumption that users who aren’t used to old-styled UIs see the lack of “sleek” design as lesser. It works doubly so that users aren’t willing to venture outside of their ecosystems and will put up with anything regardless if it’s detrimental to their experience.

      Compare users of new reddit and the official app vs. users of old reddit and 3PA. I used 3PA because there wasn’t an official app and RiF matched what I was used to. It’s a similar phenomena to Apple users vs Windows/Android. People are just used to a streamlined sleek experience (which to be fair has it’s merits) but to say it’s superior or that the alternative is lesser is a large misstep in thinking.

      It takes effort to go out of your comfort zone but it’s saddening to see users mindlessly, for lack of a better terms, consume

    • MercuryUprising@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, for real. “But there’s no fun awards and bubbly icons and bright colors.”

      Well then, go back to kindergarten.

    • SoPunny@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same, was using old.Reddit before and plan on figuring out how to use the tools I saw to redo lemmy to page layout on no stupid questions.

  • blueskiesoc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think the more they removed about Reddit alternatives, the more people will be reminded that there are alternatives to Reddit.

  • dino@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If you don’t like the UI, you can always download a browser extension that change the CSS of the website. However, if this is the main criticism people do to Lemmy, I would say that’s not bad for a relatively new platform

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    1 year ago

    It feels familiar to old.reddit so i like it. Squabbles has an interesting approach to displaying posts + comments tho

    • Crayon8027@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I tried Squabbles and got so confused. Took me forever to realize that the post was on the left column and the replies were on the right column. I stupidly thought Squabbles was combining Twitter and Reddit and thought the two columns were completely independent from one another. It makes sense to me now, but my simple brain likes this layout.

  • Maple@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s about personal preference. It’s important to have a user interface that’s modular and comfortable for the end user and manageable for the devs. Options are always the answer, the ability to enable or disable certain aspect or details is what drives me towards one app or the other. (This is coming from someone who used Infinity for Reddit for the past 4 years.)

    • SSTF@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      It just seems incredibly nitpicky to call alternatives lazy for not having all of the modularity of a decade+ old platform.

      ”Reddit is imploding, and the CEO is being terrible to users, and the native app is super intrusive and inefficient but ugh the alternatives have square buttons.”

      Just really weird that the lack of visual bells and whistles is something to even talk about at the moment. Just a little lower in the thread, the same person complained about lack of gilding. Just, really weird complaints.

      • Maple@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I hear you. I agree that it’s silly to complain about that stuff right now, to the person who isn’t satisfied, instead why not post a feature request on the github and continue browsing reddit for now?

      • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m happy to have people like that stay on reddit. They can stagnate along with the dying platform and their stupid round buttons.

        • MercuryUprising@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah. Theyre like people trying to convince you stay on the sinking ship. Wouldn’t be surprised if its an actual reddit employee talking that shit.

  • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m not really sure, I think some of them might which is weird. Though I think a lot of them are just trying to find reasons to complain about Lemmy because they are addicted to reddit, don’t want to make the switch and they know that if people start leaving Reddit they’re going to have to switch to something else and that scares the shit out of them. So they’re going to complain about Lemmy or the alternatives because they desperately don’t want to lose Reddit, their source of dopamine and fulfillment.

    • HulkSmashBurgers@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Though I think a lot of them are just trying to find reasons to complain about Lemmy because they are addicted to reddit, don’t want to make the switch and they know that if people start leaving Reddit they’re going to have to switch to something else and that scares the shit out of them.

      It sometimes amazes me how opposed to change people can sometimes be. Yeah sure Lemmy is different, but not radically so.

  • Taztrophe@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I prefer clean interfaces and thus far haven’t been disappointed. Just gimme a dark theme option and I’m (mostly) happy.

  • DarkKnight_@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Someone didn’t grow up during the days of forums.

    But as a designer, I understand where they’re coming from. Especially if they were using the new reddit design on the web and Apollo on mobile. At the very least though, I think Lemmy’s default UI looks much better than old.reddit (and I say that as someone who still uses old.reddit).

  • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter?” Hell nah! Polar opposite here.

    I absolutely hate it when sites randomly redesign to look “modern” and “hip” or whatever you want to call it. Forcefully adding flashy, colorful stuff that you can’t turn off again or opt out of is a surefire way for me to dislike the site in question immediatly. Emojis, animated smileys, glitter effects, neon-colored letters, autoplay-animations, and worst of all: sound effects! Nope. Nu-uh. Get that sh*t away from me. I like my black-squared, simple layout and silent browsing experience, thank you very much.

  • PorkSoda@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    One thing I do dislike, the post width on desktop is limited. Between the sidebar always being shown and the container being 1140 px wide, the comment section ends up only being 760 px wide; way too narrow for me.

    I wrote a Stylus script for Firefox to make the posts full-width.

    URL starts with: https://lemmy.world/post

    Script:

    .container, .container-lg, .container-md, .container-sm, .container-xl {
    	max-width: 100%;
    }
    
    .col-md-8 {
    	flex: 0 0 80%;
    	max-width: 80%;
    }
    
    .col-md-4 {
    	flex: 0 0 20%;
    	max-width: 20%;
    }
    
    • teuast@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m just glad it defaults to dark mode. Any site that defaults to light mode can go straight to hell.

      • Sjoerd1993@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It doesn’t default to dark mode, it defaults to the system setting. It’s light on my device.

        Which any self respecting site should be doing either way, it’s not difficult to implement, at all.

  • jg1i@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Reddit’s UI and performance was pretty horrible for me in the browser. That being said, I find Lemmy’s UI and performance worse. 😢

    They definitely need to hire a real designer and work on performance. It’s pretty bad when I try to subscribe to a community on lemmy.ml from lemmy.world. It takes like minutes for me for the request to go through.

    The contrast between white and lime green is pretty bad too. The design makes the app feel cheap. That matters for a lot of people.

    I’m hopeful Lemmy will get better over time. 👍

    • Sir_Simon_Spamalot@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Everything looks better on Jerboa. I went back on the browser to see what you’re talking about and immediately saw what you’re talking about!

      Shouldn’t be too hard to change the CSS, but I wish this isn’t the default. Even grey would look better.

      I hope the devs check these posts out.

      • JeffCraig@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I honestly have a hard time using it outside of Jerboa. It’s not just UI, but functionality issues as well. I don’t blame people for being turned off. It’s a big part of the reason why I don’t think we’ll see large scale adoption. And I don’t even think the current way things are set up can handle large scale.

        Lemmy is a good experiment, but I’m not sure this form of federation is going to work.

        • dustyData@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          In FOSS there’s two kinds of people. Those who contribute to the change they want to see in the world, and people who removed about unimportant things.

    • candyman337@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Lemmy hosters don’t need to use the official UI, it’s just the only one that currently exists, we just need a better front end developed by someone